For the first time in Southern California’s recent history there have been serious runs of wahoo, not just the occasional odd catch. Last summer one of our customers tried to register his 84-pound wahoo as a state record, but the California Fish and Wildlife would not register it because the state did not have a wahoo category. When asked why they said, “Because there are no
wahoo in California waters.”

Well, we know differently now. More importantly, what’s the secret to catching them locally?

For many years wahoo have traditionally been caught only by long-range anglers. On those trips the angler is accompanied by an experienced captain, experienced deck hands, and a fair amount of experienced anglers, most of which have fished for wahoo before, some of them many times before. As a result after all that fishing time the best techniques and lures for wahoo have been developed. Even then they are not all that consistent. For example on some trips all the wahoo caught on wahoo bombs are caught on red, orange, or purple and you can’t buy a bite on green or blue. If that happened to be your first wahoo trip you would naturally come back thinking you now know the best colors for wahoo. On the next trip it is just as likely that the hot colors for the bombs will be blues and greens. This is all figured out early in each trip because fishing on a long range boat has the benefit of letting you see the relative success of the various colors, lures and techniques that are being used on the boat all at the same time. What is working on that trip quickly becomes obvious.